Analysis for elements and compounds within industrial solutions is essential to proper and economic utilization of most commercial scale processes. For the most part modification of laboratory analytical equipment simplified for use to analyze a component or components in a particular process stream has been adequate. However, some elements and compounds of these elements are not widely employed in the industrial world and many of these elements are still analyzed by the older time consuming analytical techniques. For example, vanadium is still analyzed by the wet ash method. When an element or its compound, such as sodium vanadate, is found in admixture with other compounds, as for example, a Stretford process solution for removing acid gases from natural and synthetic gases, the analysis may require several analytical procedures and is so time consuming that partial adjustment of the various components in the treating solution is more or less haphazard resulting in large swings in treating gas acid gas content. Thus, during operation of an acid gas treating process, for example, that known as the "Stretford Process", it is necessary to determine the concentration of several of the essential components of the absorbent liquid to enable replenishment of these components from time to time to maintain an economic process whose products meet a specific acid gas specification, four aliquots of the solution have to be analyzed, each aliquot treated in a different manner. The total analysis takes about one and a half hours. The separate analyses are: sodium hydroxide titration which takes about 5 minutes, total carbonate alkalinity titration which takes about one hour, sodium vanadate by the wet-ash method including the blank which takes about one hour and sodium thiosulfate and its blank which takes about 15 minutes. These analytical methods usually are accurate to about .+-.5% in the presence of the Stretford matrix.
It would therefore be advantageous to have available an analytical method which would give results for all four components in about 20 minutes using a single sample or aliquot. Similarily it would be advantageous to have available a method which can be used in a complex matrix such as the Stretford streams but also can be used where one or more of these components is present.